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3.4 AVERAGE
3.4 AVERAGE
Chuck has been one of my favorite authors since I was young, but this made me feel like I had outgrown him. It’s set with multiple authors, which we are supposed to believe wrote different short stories throughout the book. However, the voice behind the stories are all Chuck’s. This was his chance to stretch his creative capabilities and that did not happen. I love the idea behind it, but I think he should have taken more chances creatively vs pushing gore and eccentricity onto his readers. We also don’t get to know the authors, the characters have no backstory and we are never given a reason to care about them - the character development in his books are typically what give those cringe moments so much tenacity. Maybe I’ll finish it eventually, but this was the first book I’ve ever decided to put down with no plans to pick it back up.
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
challenging
dark
funny
tense
medium-paced
Horror doesn't have to be a slasher on your heels on a dark and stormy night. Horror can be discovering that your spouse isn't who you thought he was; hell, it can even be discovering that you aren't who you thought you were. Horror can be the lengths people can go to chase pleasure, gratification, fame, money...
dark
mysterious
tense
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
dark
sad
tense
Really don’t know how to rate this given the content matter, but wow what a gross, disturbing, wild ride
Too long, read enough to get the gist. Felt like I was missing out on other spooky season books.
Hated the gibberish worrying style and pointless stories.
dark
slow-paced
3.5 stars
I first picked up this novel because someone somewhere on a Reddit thread mentioned it in response to the question "What are some really scary books I could read? Like, I've read Stephen King and HP Lovecraft and the likes but just feel like I'm after something else". In the response, it was said that Haunted was one of the most disturbing and scary books ever written, but that it wasn't for any of the normal reasons that one might expect.
Intrigued as to what that meant, I got my hands on this and plunged right in without further thought. A point I should probably make is that now that I've finished it, I can tell that all the uproar and controversy which arose when the author was doing public readings of this novel is mainly because of its enormous shock value. There are very, very graphic descriptions in this book that would make anyone squirm because of the way it was written to paint an extremely specific, gruesome picture in your head. I'm personally not an easily squeamish person, so I feel that the book didn't have a particularly strong effect on me in that sense - however, instead of serving as a shortcoming I think that it actually allowed me to see past the face-value gore and depravity and filth in this novel in order to truly evaluate, and eventually appreciate, what I found here.
Haunted is not like any other book I've ever read in my life. It's a series of short stories, each meant to be written by the different people who are trapped in a writer's retreat that starts to go wrong in horrifying ways. Each short story is accompanied by a poem about the person who wrote it, and all of it is threaded together by the recurrent background plot of experiences the writers were having whilst stuck at the retreat.
Despite being bored and sometimes rather tired of the unnecessary and comical levels of violence and ickiness, I did enjoy some of the short stories a lot more than others. My favourites were Swan Song, Dog Years, Exodus, The Nightmare Box and especially Speaking Bitterness. While it is clear that the characters in this novel are meant to be caricatures, they are still caricatures of humanity. It's sort of like when you get a funny picture of yourself drawn by some street artist that shows all of your worst features exacerbated, so that one moment you're laughing at how odd it looks and the next you're turning it face-down because staring at it for too long feels uncomfortable. Because those ugly parts of you that have been highlighted hit a little too close too home, seem a little too probable, bring up insecurities and doubts about yourself that you never want to think about for too long. The stories in Haunted have that same effect. Yes, it gets overboard at times, and will have you rolling your eyes over and over, but there are also times that those same stories will make you sit down and ponder everything that normal, happy people in today's world try not to think about in order to avoid spiralling into a hole of hopelessness and disgust. This book is that funny drawing by the street artist, except that it's a drawing of humanity, of society. With all of its narcissism, depravity, selfishness, vengefulness and sin amplified just enough for you to be aware that it's satire, but with such a heavy ring of truth to it that will leave you feeling deeply unsettled.
As I said, some of the stories were genuinely excellent, while others just felt like they were there in the novel to take up space. All the stories, though supposedly written by different people in the group, have the exact same tone and style. The author switching between past and present tense frequently for no reason was something that irritated me while I was reading it, but not as much the inconsistency between first and third person narratives - something that I hate when reading books written by professional writers.
All in all, this book gave me loads to think about, loads to digest, and to be honest, loads of bits that I will probably be looking to repress from my memory altogether. I wouldn't recommend this to anyone with a faint heart or weak stomach - but if you're someone who's willing to look past all the bloody and appalling shock-value that I'm certain the author intended to disturb his readers with, you may end up actually liking this, or at least feeling conflicted about whether you want to talk to everyone you know about Haunted right away, or if you'd much rather just set the whole thing on fire and watch it burn.
I first picked up this novel because someone somewhere on a Reddit thread mentioned it in response to the question "What are some really scary books I could read? Like, I've read Stephen King and HP Lovecraft and the likes but just feel like I'm after something else". In the response, it was said that Haunted was one of the most disturbing and scary books ever written, but that it wasn't for any of the normal reasons that one might expect.
Intrigued as to what that meant, I got my hands on this and plunged right in without further thought. A point I should probably make is that now that I've finished it, I can tell that all the uproar and controversy which arose when the author was doing public readings of this novel is mainly because of its enormous shock value. There are very, very graphic descriptions in this book that would make anyone squirm because of the way it was written to paint an extremely specific, gruesome picture in your head. I'm personally not an easily squeamish person, so I feel that the book didn't have a particularly strong effect on me in that sense - however, instead of serving as a shortcoming I think that it actually allowed me to see past the face-value gore and depravity and filth in this novel in order to truly evaluate, and eventually appreciate, what I found here.
Haunted is not like any other book I've ever read in my life. It's a series of short stories, each meant to be written by the different people who are trapped in a writer's retreat that starts to go wrong in horrifying ways. Each short story is accompanied by a poem about the person who wrote it, and all of it is threaded together by the recurrent background plot of experiences the writers were having whilst stuck at the retreat.
Despite being bored and sometimes rather tired of the unnecessary and comical levels of violence and ickiness, I did enjoy some of the short stories a lot more than others. My favourites were Swan Song, Dog Years, Exodus, The Nightmare Box and especially Speaking Bitterness. While it is clear that the characters in this novel are meant to be caricatures, they are still caricatures of humanity. It's sort of like when you get a funny picture of yourself drawn by some street artist that shows all of your worst features exacerbated, so that one moment you're laughing at how odd it looks and the next you're turning it face-down because staring at it for too long feels uncomfortable. Because those ugly parts of you that have been highlighted hit a little too close too home, seem a little too probable, bring up insecurities and doubts about yourself that you never want to think about for too long. The stories in Haunted have that same effect. Yes, it gets overboard at times, and will have you rolling your eyes over and over, but there are also times that those same stories will make you sit down and ponder everything that normal, happy people in today's world try not to think about in order to avoid spiralling into a hole of hopelessness and disgust. This book is that funny drawing by the street artist, except that it's a drawing of humanity, of society. With all of its narcissism, depravity, selfishness, vengefulness and sin amplified just enough for you to be aware that it's satire, but with such a heavy ring of truth to it that will leave you feeling deeply unsettled.
As I said, some of the stories were genuinely excellent, while others just felt like they were there in the novel to take up space. All the stories, though supposedly written by different people in the group, have the exact same tone and style. The author switching between past and present tense frequently for no reason was something that irritated me while I was reading it, but not as much the inconsistency between first and third person narratives - something that I hate when reading books written by professional writers.
All in all, this book gave me loads to think about, loads to digest, and to be honest, loads of bits that I will probably be looking to repress from my memory altogether. I wouldn't recommend this to anyone with a faint heart or weak stomach - but if you're someone who's willing to look past all the bloody and appalling shock-value that I'm certain the author intended to disturb his readers with, you may end up actually liking this, or at least feeling conflicted about whether you want to talk to everyone you know about Haunted right away, or if you'd much rather just set the whole thing on fire and watch it burn.